WhyGreens’‘hymn ofhate’mat­ters

“We con­demn Zion­ism as a racist ide­ol­ogy based on Jewish supremacy in Palestine, as well as the re­lated ide­ol­ogy of Chris­tian Zion­ism… We sup­port the Pales­tinian non-vi­o­lent strug­gle for re­sis­tance to the coloni­sa­tion of their lands, re­sources and peo­ples by Is­rael and by Zion­ist set­tlers.”

In fact, these words come from the pol­icy state­ment on Is­rael and Palestine adopted by the Scot­tish Green Party at its con­fer­ence last week­end.

The doc­u­ment has at­tracted at­ten­tion for its de­mand that Ha­mas be re­moved from the list of pro­scribed ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, but there are even more dis­turb­ing pro­vi­sions.

The res­o­lu­tion “con­demns Is­rael’s claim to be ‘the Jewish State’”, in­stead declar­ing it an “apartheid” so­ci­ety “in which non-Jews have in­fe­rior rights”. As such, it de­mands the law of re­turn be scrapped for Jews and a right of re­turn in­tro­duced for Pales­tini­ans.

To achieve this, the Scot­tish Greens en­dorse boy­cotts of Is­raeli busi­nesses, aca­demics and cul­tural in­sti­tu­tions, Jewish and Arab, He­bron and Haifa. And while call­ing for the re­lease of Pales­tinian “po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers”, they want to see the JNF stripped of its char­i­ta­ble sta­tus.

There is some throat-clear­ing about Is­rael as a safe haven af­ter the Holo­caust but it’s tepid stuff. Even amid ris­ing anti-Is­rael sen­ti­ment on the Euro­pean left, the Greens have carved out a star­tlingly ex­treme niche.

Stan­ley Grossman, of Scot­tish Friends of Is­rael, said the res­o­lu­tion was “ab­surd… lit­tle more than a hymn of hate for Is­rael”.

The rea­son it must be taken se­ri­ously is the on­go­ing up­heaval in Scot­tish pol­i­tics, where the pro-in­de­pen­dence Greens have recorded a five-fold mem­ber­ship jump since last year’s ref­er­en­dum. They hope to boost their seats into dou­ble fig­ures at next May’s Scot­tish Par­lia­ment elec­tions. The pro­por­tional vot­ing sys­tem helps smaller par­ties, and a Green surge could cost the SNP their over­all ma­jor­ity.

That would leave the Greens king­mak­ers, and while the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment en­joys no for­eign pol­icy pow­ers, the SNP likes to push the bound­aries, es­pe­cially on the Mid-East.

In their equa­tion of Zion­ism to racism, the Greens un­earth the no­to­ri­ous UN res­o­lu­tion 3379 and wear it with pride. When the Gen­eral Assem­bly car­ried that mo­tion, Daniel Pa­trick Moyni­han, the United States UN am­bas­sador, pro­claimed: “A great evil has been loosed upon the world.”

De­spite the res­o­lu­tion’s even­tual re­peal, that evil has never been con­tained again. It is at the root of much “pro­gres­sive” anti-Zion­ism to­day. It is why a party of mild-man­nered Scot­tish en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists can in­veigh against “Jewish supremacy” with­out shame. Stephen Dais­ley is dig­i­tal po­lit­i­cal cor­re­spon­dent at STV